i'll bring you the stars
by jiangweiwei
Summary: "Do you want to see my scar?" Keith blurted out. Lance narrowed his eyes incredulously. "Have you been listening to me? I just told you that you scared the living hell out of me by almost dying." AKA my take on season 8 and the consequences of their battle with Sendak. Klance.
1. Chapter 1

_Lance opened his eyes into the darkness. His head pounded like someone was slamming a hammer into it, and when he moved his arm he felt his whole body throb in response. He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position._

_Red's lights were off — that was the first thing he noticed. She was there, in the back of his mind, but just barely, like she was sleeping._

"_What… happened?" his voice rasped into the darkness._

_Red seemed to awaken in his mind and fed images into his head, the scenes moving in front of him like a movie reel. The Robeast releasing a blast of pure energy into Voltron's chest. Keith's voice, crying out. Falling, the sandy-colored Earth rocketing towards them as they fell._

_Lance's eyes widened. Voltron's chest… that's the Black Lion. Was Keith…? Was he-_

_Red lights flickered as Lance pulled himself up. His vision swam, and he felt hot blood trickle down his temple as he took a wobbly step forward. He took another step. Fell against the door. Staggered through the cargo bay of his lion and outside._

_There were black pillars of smoke rising around him, and orange Garrison off-roaders kicking up dust as they charged toward Red's limp body. Lance turned around and rested the palm of his hand against his Lion's hull. "I'll be right back, Red. Just hang on."_

_He started stumbling towards the largest pillar, the one with the darkest smoke, where he knew the Black Lion would be. He walked until he thought he would pass out, and then he walked some more. One foot in front of the other, the commotion around him blurring until all he could see was the smoke in front of him. He just had to make sure Keith was okay, that he was even _alive_._

_Lance crested a rise and looked down. Below him was the Black Lion. Behind him was the Garrison, their trucks still coming. His breathing was haggard as he slowly made his way into the crater, tripping hard but getting back to his feet even as his tired muscles screamed for rest._

_Black's mouth was already open, the doors wide for Lance to stumble through. The lights weren't even flickering as the Red Paladin climbed inside. His heart jumped into his throat at the same time as his stomach dropped._

"_Keith," he choked out. "Jesus Christ."_

_Keith was on the ground, limp, thrown against a wall. The back of his chestplate was blackened, not from fire, but from what Lance recognized as the residual dark magic of the witch Haggar. He was bleeding from somewhere, but Lance's vision was getting fuzzy and it was hard to tell where it was coming from. His long hair covered his eyes._

_Lance shakily grabbed the boy's shoulder. "Keith, wake up. Keith?"_

_He didn't respond, didn't even stir._

_Lance leaned down and pressed an ear to his chest. It was faint, but there was a heartbeat. Hot, grateful tears streamed down his face and beaded like crystals on Keith's chestplate. "You're one lucky bastard, Keith."_

_Keith didn't respond, but that was okay. As long as his heart was still beating and his eyelashes were still fluttering, everything would be okay. Lance felt something in his chest swell and burst, didn't acknowledge the tears that were streaming down his face. He just held onto Keith — knowing there was nothing he could do about the magic burn and hating it — until the paramedics came._

"Lance?"

The Cuban boy jerked his head up, startling awake in his seat. "Wuh?"

Keith's eyebrows drew together, his expression both amused and irritated. "Did you just fall asleep?"

"Uh…" Lance said intelligently, subtly rolling his shoulders to expel some tension. "No?"

Keith looked like he wanted to smack Lance with his the back of his hand, but he leaned back against the pillows of his hospital bed with a resigned expression. Outside, the sun dipped below the horizon and streaked the sky with pale golds and pinks, the desert landscape made softer by the sunset. There were hundreds of casualties from their final battle against Sendak, but Keith had managed to get the best view in the hospital.

"If you were awake, what was I just talking about?" Keith teased, his eyebrows resuming their natural place on his face.

"That's a trick question," Lance shot back. "You weren't talking because you never talk."

The Black Paladin rolled his eyes, and Lance watched the way his lips twitched up in the barest hint of a smile. "Okay, Lance."

They settled into an easy silence. Well, easy for Keith. Lance was still trying to recover from his flashback. The fact that he could remember it so clearly scared him. The fact that it had happened scared him. The fact that Keith was here, in the hospital, for the third week in a row with a giant lightning scar on his back, scared him.

"Hey," the object of Lance's eternal torment said. "You don't look so good."

"Gee, thanks."

"Something bothering you?"

It was the question to end all questions, going right down to the root of the matter. Well, not all the way. What had happened to Keith, his friend and his teammate, was doing more to Lance than bothering him. He wanted to put Keith in a bubble and never let him leave — he couldn't do that, of course, because Keith would find a way to escape anyway.

Lance rolled his shoulders. It was his tell, the action that revealed whenever he was lying or hiding something, but he hoped Ketih hadn't figured that out yet. "Nah, I'm just thinking."

The Black Paladin looked like he wanted to argue, but he shook his head. He said, "Wow, Lance, thinking?"

"Haha," Lance deadpanned back, reaching out and throwing an empty styrofoam cup at the other paladin. "It's not like you're any better."

Keith let the cup bounce off his shoulder and fall to the floor. They both looked at it, lying sideways on the floor and slowly rolling away. Lance felt like a styrofoam cup. He felt like he was going to fall over and roll under a hospital bed for the staff to find a few weeks later. He didn't know exactly what that meant, but he felt it anyway.

"I think," Keith said after a silence.

"You mean after you do the thing."

"Same thing."

Lance scoffed, the sound a little too loud for the quiet hospital wing. He and Keith had never been awkward, always finding a way to bicker over some petty disagreement, but Lance was so focused on keeping the mood light that he couldn't think of anything else to say that was light. He wanted to tell Keith about his recurring nightmare (the one where Keith featured as the main lead), but he knew that would make things between them even worse.

His lips were moving before he could stop himself, the tone of his voice far too vulnerable and far too unstable. "Keith-"

The door slid open with a soft swoosh, and a male nurse was stepping through. Lance swallowed down his sentence, face growing a few shades paler. Saved by the bell.

"Hey, Austin," Keith greeted him, his eyes slowly sliding away from Lance reluctantly.

"It's time to check your bandages," the nurse, Austin, said. The message was clear.

"I guess that's my cue," Lance smiled, pushing up from his seat, but the expression was a little too forced to be called easy. "I'll see you tomorrow, Keith."

The Black Paladin looked like he wanted to argue, to tell Lance to stay right where he was and finish the sentence that was going to torture him until tomorrow, but he grit his teeth. "Yeah."

Lance closed the door quietly behind him and took a deep breath. That was too close. He almost fucked up. They'd been good so far, and he almost ruined it all.

_I need someone to talk to._

To say he was stressed would be an understatement — with everything going on with Keith and the Lions and the humongous orange monstrosity of a replacement for the Castle and Shiro and even Allura, his mental state had plummeted and kept falling ever since he woke up after the crash. Maybe the doctors would give him some medical marijuana.

Lance twisted and reached up with an arm, fluidly sliding into a different pose. Yoga was something he'd done with his family even before joining the Garrison. It had a way of loosening his mind from the tight, spiraling stress he usually fell into while also keeping his body in shape.

As Lance contorted into another shape, his door swished open with a hydraulic sound. "Yoga?"

"Wanna join, Shiro?" Lance asked him serenely. "There's another mat in the locker."

"Sure," the white-haired man shrugged, reaching into the footlocker Lance had indicated, and shrugged off his military jacket. He settled on the floor and began to try and mimic the pose Lance had settled into.

"What brings you here?"

Shiro managed to get the position and sighed as something popped. "Hunk told me that you were stressed out. What's going on?"

Lance considered for a moment. He knew Shiro would never say anything as long as Lance asked him not to, but it was one thing to have nightmares about and another thing to actually say out loud. He moved on to another pose.

After Shiro followed him, Lance said, "I've been having nightmares lately."

"About what?" his captain asked casually. Lance tried not to feel too bad about unloading his problems. He knew still Shiro suffered from PTSD-like symptoms in the form of nightmares even if the older man never mentioned it.

Lance paused. "Keith."

Not even a hint of surprise showed in Shiro's expression if he felt it. He merely waited for Lance to continue, to explain more and get everything off of his chest.

"You know, regular nightmare stuff," Lance shrugged. "Exploding, Haggar, sometimes Zarkon. Sometimes he flies the Black Lion into an exploding planet to save some family or something."

"Nightmare stuff," Shiro agreed, keeping his voice even.

Lance looked at him sideways, feeling his calm begin to ebb. "Yeah."

"Why Keith?"

Good question. Lance himself didn't know exactly why he was so hung up over this, why Keith was the one featuring in his dreams and not Hunk or Pidge or even himself. "I-I don't know. I guess I haven't thought about it."

"Maybe you should," Shiro told him gently, easing out of the knot he'd tied himself into and getting up from the floor. "You should pick up anything you want from Earth before we go. It's wheels up in five days."

"Yeah," Lance sighed, running a hand down his face. "Thanks, Shiro."

"Of course," the man smiled, shrugging on his jacket.

"And, uh, don't tell Keith about this?"

"I won't."

Shiro let the door swish shut behind him, the mat back in the footlocker and Lance's frown back on his face. Hunk told him he was stressed? He must be more obvious than he thought. Lance let his head drop against the side of his bed as a sigh tore from his mouth.

What was wrong with him? Lance has always been able to keep most of his true feelings under wraps, so how come he'd suddenly lost the ability to keep his heart away from his sleeve?


	2. Chapter 2

Lance was visiting him again, the second time in as many days. Always with the spacing out and the jokes to cover it up. It had been like that ever since Keith had been hospitalized, and though he wasn't complaining about the company it was a little strange for Lance to seek him out so often.

As from before, Keith noticed the creases in his forehead, the way his shoulders never fully relaxed, the badly concealed shadows under his eyes; Lance wasn't well. The others had moved on from their near-death experiences without much hassle — they were used to the danger by now — and yet Lance seemed to take this one to heart. Maybe it was because it was Earth, or because his family was directly in danger, but he seemed so… Keith didn't even know what.

"I don't know about you," Shiro said from his side, "but it's getting late and there's a lot that needs working on tomorrow. Come on, Lance. Keith needs to rest."

Keith had almost forgotten he was there. His pseudo-brother had grown into his position as captain, and Keith could visibly see the effect of being back in the military was having on him. He was still assured and calm, but there was also another energy coming from him, one of absolute authority. With the Paladins, there had been a chance that Keith or Lance would do something reckless and disobey orders, but in the military everyone followed his word to a T. It was a nice look on him, even if Keith had found it annoying as a kid.

As they moved to leave, Keith said, "Shiro, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Sure," he said, giving Lance a look that said _I'll be right out_.

Keith didn't miss the look Lance gave their captain over his shoulder in return. He waited until the door was shut before he tentatively asked, "Is there something going on with Lance?"

A brief flash of conflict stole over the white-haired man's face before he said, "Yes."

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose. He was right. How could he be wrong when the evidence was walking around and talking to him? "And I guess you can't tell me what it's about."

Shiro offered a blithe shrug. "He asked me not to. Sorry, Keith, you'll have to ask him yourself."

"I did," Keith whined. He lowered his hand and scowled. "He blew me off and cracked a joke to cover it up like he normally does. If he tries to tell me he's fine one more time, I'm going to yeet him out the window."

Shiro took a step back. "Feeling anxious being all cooped up in here?"

"Like a butterfly pinned to a wall."

Shiro smiled sympathetically, the kind of smile that made Keith feel like a little kid again. "If it makes you feel any better, they're probably going to discharge you soon."

"Really? Hey, stop changing the subject. I still wanna know what's wrong with Lance," Keith grouched, feeling his mood lighten even as he scowled harder.

Shiro held up his hands in mock surrender, laughing, but his expression sobered when he saw Keith's frown deepen. "You really should ask him if you're so worried, Keith."

"Worried?" Keith prickled. If he'd had hackles they'd be raised. As it was, he had to settle for furrowing his eyebrows. "More like distantly concerned."

"Sure," Shiro agreed easily.

It made Keith more annoyed. "I'm just a concerned citizen looking out for my teammates."

"Okay," Shiro nodded, the smile on his face growing wider by the second.

"No, really."

"I'm not arguing."

Keith felt his left eye twitch. "Get out."

The little bastard had the audacity to sail out of the room with a laugh. Keith huffed and leaned back against his pillows. He liked to think that he and Lance were friends, but the Cuban boy had been off lately, and Keith suspected he was avoiding him after almost spilling whatever was troubling him. Lance must not trust him enough or feel comfortable enough to tell him.

_Am I that prickly?_ Keith thought about it for a second. He vaguely remembered telling Lance he could shove a broom up his ass a few days ago. He totally saw why Lance had told Shiro and not him. _Okay, maybe I am that prickly_.

But… what could possibly be bothering him enough that he would look like that? Lance was such an avid supporter of getting his beauty sleep and taking care of his body that it seemed impossible to Keith for him to be anything less than perfectly rested. Was he eating alright? Fuck, Keith didn't even know because he was stuck in this fucking hospital bed.

Keith looked down at his legs. One of them had fallen asleep, and the other was probably about to follow it. Not for the first time and definitely not the last, frustration crept upon him like the little train that could. He wanted to get out, and he wanted to get out _right now._

With more effort than should've been necessary, Keith swung his legs over the side of the bed, the one that fell asleep protesting violently. He heard the monitor next to him start to beep faster, indicating his heartbeat was picking up, but he ignored it. Feeling the determination of a thousand suns burn somewhere in his chest, he pulled the IV out of his arm and ripped off the sticky sensors they'd put on his chest and stomach. The machine made a sound like he'd flatlined, but Keith couldn't even hear it past the rushing in his ears. Quiznak, he wanted to get out of here.

His feet hit the floor. Keith sucked in a breath at the cold sensation and grinned like a madman because he was finally going to get out of this stale hospital room. He slowly got to his feet, using the bed for support, and then he was standing. The pain in his back was exploding, but the smile stayed on his face as he took a step. Another. Three more.

He opened the door and stepped out. His nurse, Austin, was already running up, the look of wild confusion on his face so amazing that Keith savored it for a moment before he demanded, "I want the paperwork to get the fuck out of here."

They made him do a bunch of tests before he was cleared to go, but that was fine because Keith was still riding the wave of satisfaction he got from actually getting somewhere and from the look of sheer confusion on the faces of those who had rushed to his room. The doctors had thought he just went and died, and then they saw him walk out of the room like nothing had happened. Priceless. He wished the others had been there to see it.

The doctor walked back into the room with a clipboard, a frown on his face. "You've been cleared to go by the Garrison."

"Why are you frowning?" Keith asked him brusquely. "Is there something wrong?"

"The wound you sustained," the doctor murmured just loud enough for Keith to hear, "it's been healing, leaving the scar, of course, but it's not disappearing by any means."

His blood ran cold at the words. The scar on his back looked like one you got when struck by lightning, but not quite; they arced down his back instead of flowering out from the point of impact, the color of bruises and even more painful. "What do you mean, not disappearing?"

"The discoloration doesn't appear to be fading, and there's a residual effect that seems to spike randomly. It won't be too painful normally, but if it acts up randomly it will be like the other… attacks you've had."

Keith recalled feeling spikes of intense pain without prompting, but he assumed that was because there was something going on with his medication. "Can you do anything about it?"

"We can try," the doctor told him firmly like he really wanted to help. Keith regretted not learning his name. "We sent a sample over to the labs at the Garrison, and they're going to start working on a solution."

Keith swallowed, turning around to look at his reflection in the window behind him. It was partially hidden by his hair, but he could see the beginnings of the supernatural scar peeking out from under his shirt. "Thanks."

The doctor looked at him a moment longer and nodded. "Well then, Keith, you're free to go. Good luck."

"Thanks," Keith said again, offering a small smile. He grabbed his jacket from where it was hanging on the back of a chair and walked out of the room with a light step. Freedom.

The others had no idea he'd been discharged, which suited him fine. It meant he could have some time to shower and change clothes before he barged into a meeting he knew they were having with the top brass of the Garrison. The looks that would be on their faces — it almost made him giggle.

He had to get his security clearance card from some officer before he could go to his assigned room, but that was fine because then he was in the shower and the hot water and privacy felt so good that his skin tingled happily. Keith washed the oil and dirt out of his hair and watched as three weeks' worth of grossness washed down the drain. Honestly, he was surprised that no one commented on his BO the whole time they visited.

Keith stepped out of the shower feeling like a new man until he saw the edges of his apparently magic scar creeping from his back over his shoulders, but he looked away and focused on finding some clean clothes.

He sauntered over to the bureau and opened a drawer curiously, holding a towel around his waist. Surprisingly, it was full, and not with the military regulation clothes from the Garrison. Keith's eyebrows drew together, as they were wont to do, and he pulled out what looked like a sweater curiously. It unfolded into a simple grey v-neck. Keith's eyebrows drew closer to each other as he tossed the sweater onto the bed and opened another draw. He pulled out some black pants, dark wash jeans, socks, t-shirts, more sweaters, sweatshirts, and even underwear, ranging from a neutral green to red to simple black and white. These had obviously been picked out to match everything else.

Keith pulled out some ripped jeans, threw them on the mountain of over clothes on the bed, and ran a hand through his hair. His eyes shot to the panel next to the door and he strode over to it, still holding onto his towel. He opened up the access logs for his room and sure enough, there it was — Lance McClain, four days ago. Keith remembered him saying something about his good taste in fashion and a smirk, but he'd dismissed it as unimportant.

"That asshole got me a whole wardrobe," Keith said out loud. Slowly, he turned to look at the closed door of the closet. "No way. There can't be more."

There was. There were a few pairs of shoes, combat boots and Vans, and those Adidas sneakers everyone had been wearing before they left Earth. Keith's eyes slowly tracked up. A leather jacket. A nice looking one, too. He'd never had the money to even breathe on something like that leather jacket before, and now here it was in his closet.

"Fuck you, Lance," Keith burst out and slammed the door closed, sitting on the floor right where he was.

Keith thought his chest was going to explode. He and Lance were friends, sure, but these looked expensive, and there were so many of them. He had been in enough rough patches in his life to appreciate money when he had it, and Lance was galivanting around and wasting it on him. Clothes — which he knew Lance cared about — for him.

Keith hated and loved Lance at the same time.

The panel next to the door beeped seven times, signaling it was now seven o'clock and Keith had been freaking out about his closet for half an hour. The Black Paladin slowly pulled himself up and cautiously picked up some underwear and put it on. He didn't want to know how Lance got his size correctly. He hesitated and then slipped on the ripped jeans he'd pulled out of the dresser last, and found a random grey t-shirt and put that on too.

He swallowed twice before he pulled the leather jacket off its hangar and shrugged it on. It wasn't brand new, slightly worn, and that made him like it even more. Jesus, it was nice. Keith didn't care if it looked good or not, he just liked it.

He checked the time again and cursed under his breath. His mental breakdown on the floor had cost him precious minutes if he wanted to be in the meeting room before the others go there. Keith sprinted out the door and let his feet carry him down the hallway.


	3. Chapter 3

Lance didn't even see him at first. Keith was leaning back in his chair, completely at ease, with that signature flat look on his face, when they walked in. And… he was wearing the clothes Lance had picked out for him. He was actually wearing them. Seeing the leather jacket (which he'd made a point to look for) on Keith made something in his stomach contract painfully. Lance didn't want to think about the fact that Keith looked way too good in it for his own good, but it popped up in his head anyway.

"Keith!" the paladins said as one, and in the blink of an eye, they were crowding around the Black Paladin with a million questions.

"When did you get out?" Shiro asked.

"Two hours ago."

"How come they let you go?" Hunk asked.

"I asked them to."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Allura asked.

"Your reaction was priceless. I should've taken a picture."

"Where did you get those clothes?" Pidge asked.

Keith stilled, the smile on his face growing soft as he looked down at himself and then at Lance. He knew.

"Uh, I was out anyway," Lance cleared his throat, trying to fight down his blush. "And Keith's clothes were too small for him after the quantum abyss."

They stared at him. Pidge and Hunk looked smug like they knew something, which would've made Lance wary if he wasn't incredibly embarrassed. The silence stretched uncomfortably until the Cuban boy thought he might start laughing just to break it.

Someone behind him cleared their throat. They all turned to see Commander Iverson smiling. "It's good to have you back, Kogane. Shall we get started with the briefing?"

Lance didn't stick around. After the meeting and the terrible embarrassment that was Pidge and Hunk's suspiciously smug looks, Lance had effectively yeeted himself out of the situation and booked it. No way was he gonna be able to look Keith in the eye after that. How could he not have known something like this was going to happen? Wait — scratch that — how could he have possibly _known_ this was going to happen? There was no way Lance could've prepared himself for the onslaught of emotions at seeing Keith in that stupid leather jacket with that soft look on his face and the emotion in his eyes.

So now he was sitting in his room, in the dark, trying not to think about it and failing miserably. Lance dropped his head against the wall with a _thunk_. He was in so much trouble. Deep shit. Hot water. _Esto no está bien._

The door swished open, and Lance jerked upright on the floor next to his bed, eyes widening in panic.

"In a hurry?" Keith asked him blithely. He was just a silhouette in the door with the hallway light behind him.

"Tired," Lance lied horribly, pulse jumping at the sound of his voice.

The door closed behind him as Keith took a seat on the floor in front of him. Lance stared at the combat boots Keith was wearing, the ones he'd swiped from some nearly-destroyed department store in the city. They looked damn good on him, too.

"Stop lying to me," Keith said, and even Lance could tell that his voice was slightly strained. "I know something's up."

Lance couldn't look him in the eyes. He was better than he was yesterday when he almost spilled his guts, but not by much. If there was one thing Lance wasn't good at, it was getting rid of his negative emotions before they started to fester. He rolled his shoulders, his nervous tell, and said, "Okay, you got me. I haven't been sleeping well lately."

Keith waited. When Lance didn't say anything else, he said, "I know there's more to it than that. You can always sleep well. There's a reason behind this."

Lance shrugged. "Just normal stress stuff. We're leaving again, y'know."

"Yeah," Keith sighed. The sound was so familiar to Lance that he could recognize exactly what type of sigh it was: the I-don't-want-to-be-pushy-but-I'm-impatient sigh. "But I know it's not that, or you would tell me."

Curse Voltron for throwing them together like this. Keith knew him too well because of all their stupid bonding moments and it was backfiring on him. Lance laughed and tried to play it off. "Caught. What now, Officer? Gonna take me away?"

Lance held up his hands like he was waiting to be cuffed, but Keith batted them out of the way. "Stop using humor as your defense mechanism. It's hard to be serious when you're cracking jokes."

"That's kind of the point," Lance flopped back against the side of the bed and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. "How do you like them?"

"They're corny."

"Not the jokes, the clothes. I've only ever seen you in the clothes we brought from Earth, so I wasn't exactly sure what you would like," Lance rambled. "I just grabbed what I thought would look good on you."

Like he wasn't aware he was doing it, Keith's hand drifted up to his chest and touched the lapel of his leather jacket. "They're fine."

The way he said "fine" let Lance know that they were better than fine — great actually. "Really?"

"Yeah," Keith nodded and put his hands in the pockets, leaning against the wall opposite Lance so they could talk face-to-face. They were quiet for a beat, and then Keith said, "Me and my dad… we never had that much money. After he died and I was put in the system, I had even less. I always looked in the shop window and knew I could never have a jacket like this. So, thank you, Lance."

The thing in Lance's chest that constricted at his words clenched tighter. Maybe now was the time. This was a bonding moment, right? Keith trusted him enough to tell him something like that… maybe he could tell Keith about the nightmares.

"You were right about there being a reason," Lance sighed, running a hand through his short hair. "Some of it's the fact that we're about to leave again, don't get me wrong, but it's not the whole thing."

"I knew it."

"Shut up and let me talk, okay?" Lance scowled, and Keith snapped his mouth shut with surprisingly little pushback. Lance narrowed his eyes like Keith might try something, but he was really trying to think of what to say, how to phrase this. "They're nightmares. That's what's been keeping me up at night."

Keith's dark eyes widened slightly, glinting with the light from the hallway. "Nightmares?"

Lance bobbed his head and swallowed thickly, remembering waking up and anxiously checking whether or not he'd gotten any messages, the date and time, trying to recall what had happened after that and trying to reassure himself in the dark. "Yeah, nightmares. Not, like, Shiro-level or anything, but enough to interrupt my beauty sleep."

"... what are they about?" Keith asked, his voice soft in the near-total darkness. Why weren't any of the lights on in here?

Lance couldn't make himself say it. He wasn't ready. This felt too personal, sitting here in the dark with nothing but their breath for background noise. How could he say something like this? But his lips were already moving. "You, I guess."

He could see Keith's heart stop in his expression. "Me? You have nightmares about _me_?"

"You're not the bad guy or anything," Lance huffed, and he was suddenly thankful that Keith couldn't see him because he was sure his face was on literal fire. "You're not _that_ intimidating."

Lance watched Keith's eyebrows come together. He was going to get wrinkles. Maybe he already had them. "Then am I the victim or whatever?"

"It's just a recurring nightmare," Lance told him. "More like a memory."

"You're really trying to draw out the suspense, huh?"

"Seriously, shut up. I'm trying, okay? I don't really know how to say it. Even Shiro sort of had to guess."

"Okay, fine, I'll be quiet," Keith said, stretching his legs out so their feet almost touched in the middle of the room. Almost the middle — Keith had longer legs now.

Lance listened to the steady sound of Keith's breathing. His own pulse was through the roof. How could Keith be so calm about this? "It's a memory from the end of our battle with the rogue Altean."

Keith waited, his eyes fixed on Lance's face.

"After the explosion, I came to after Red and I hit the ground. I had a concussion or something, but I got up anyway because you'd taken most of the damage," Lance exhaled feeling a weight lift off his chest. "And when I got to your Lion, the doors were open and you were lying almost dead on the floor in the cockpit. I mean, I thought you were dead. I really did, until I found your pulse, and even that wasn't too reassuring. And ever since, I've been having nightmares about it. Like, I know you're fine and everything, but I still have them."

When Keith was quiet, Lance nervously told him, "You can talk now."

"I'm trying to figure out what to say," Keith admitted.

"Well hurry up," Lance said, but it came out a little too soft to be demanding.

Keith fixed him with a look. "Were you really that worried about me?"

"Keith, you didn't see yourself," Lance insisted, hands clenching spastically. "You were barely breathing, your chestplate was all blackened, and it smelled like ozone and _blood_ in there. Not to mention the cuts on your head and the slice you took to the side. When I saw that the lights in Black had gone out I thought for sure it was because you hadn't made it."

"Do you want to see my scar?" Keith blurted out.

Lance narrowed his eyes incredulously. "Have you been listening to me? I just told you that you scared the living hell out of me by almost dying."

"That's the point," Keith shot back, slipping out of his leather jacket and turning around. In one smooth movement, he'd pulled his t-shirt over his head and the Van Gogh on his back was exposed.

His whole back was bruised and marked. Black bruises dotted the vertebrae of his spine, purple splotches bloomed on his shoulder blades, and throughout the whole mess, it looked like lightning was arcing down his back and down the backs of his arms. It looked so painful that Lance's back twinged in sympathy.

Lance reached out with one hand, about to touch one of the spots on his spine, but recoiled as a thought hit him. "Does it hurt?"

"Not right now," Keith told him, shifting slightly. The pattern on his back rippled with the movement.

"I think I'm going to cry," Lance said, feeling that familiar prickle behind his eyes. Jesus, he was weak.

"What? No, you can't cry," Keith panicked twisting to look at Lance over his shoulder.

"Why did you want to show me this?" Lance nearly wailed, feeling defensive and sad.

"So you can see that I _survived_," Keith said, keeping his voice even with mild success. "This scar is proof that I lived through something that would've killed most people. I'm strong, Lance, strong enough to beat anything that life decides to throw at me."

Lance took a deep breath, trying to believe him, trying to believe that Keith was unstoppable. He _did_ believe him, sort of. Lance and Keith had been through more than most would and shared a bond that only came with shared trauma like being uprooted from their lives on Earth and taken to an alien planet to fight an alien tyrant with an alien machine. Lance had seen Keith survive Zarkon in one-on-one combat, had seen him adjust to lead a team that was still getting their sea legs under them in the wake of his pseudo-brother's _death_, had seen him age two years in a few weeks without much fanfare. He could trust him now.

"Solid pep talk," Lance offered weakly after a long moment.

"I practiced," Keith told him with a smile that was enough to draw one out of Lance as well.

"Put your shirt back on," Lance said and flicked him on the back of the head.

"Hey!" Keith protested, but he put his shirt back on and there was a satisfied smile on his face. "Are you good now?"

"We'll see after tonight," Lance shrugged, leaning back against the wall and trying to go for nonchalant.

"Don't sound so pessimistic."

"You're literally emo, Keith."

"I'm _not_ emo."

"You totally are. You listen to My Chemical Romance _and_ I saw you put on eyeliner once. Plus that stupid mullet, so."

"Having a mullet doesn't make me emo!"

"Keep telling yourself that. I bet you wanted people to call you Dark Wolf when you were younger."

Keith's face turned an amusing shade of pissed off.

Lance grinned. Everything felt back to normal, and for the first time in three weeks, he might actually be able to sleep for once.


End file.
